Crack'd Mirror
by Neon Kitsune
Summary: How often do you get to solve your own murder?   Possible spoilers for everything up to the beginning of Changes
1. Chapter 1

The kid was just finishing up her ritual when I got to her.

I felt the buildup of power from a hundred yards away, and as I got closer I began to be able to make out words—mostly what I caught was "part the Veil", and that made me hurry. Necromancy is almost always a capitol offense in what some of my younger colleagues have begun to call the "wizarding world" (and let me tell you how much I love sharing a name with _that_ mythos), and even if the Wardens don't get you the odds are great that whatever you're trying to do will blow up in your face if you don't have the power to control it.

And, y'know, I'm since I'm a Warden these days I'm supposed to look on this sort of thing harshly.

She'd chosen a nice, stereotypical abandoned warehouse for her ritual space, at least, which meant that if things did go kablooie I might be able to keep anyone but her from dying. However, my preference was that she not die either, if it could possibly be helped; she was just a kid, her crimes outside of this ritual amounted to theft, and as far as I could tell all she wanted was her big brother back.

As I approached the warehouse door, I heard her chanting rise to a crescendo. "Let the walls be pierced! Let the veil be lifted! In the name of Janus, he who looks forward and back, I open the way!" she cried, and I cursed under my breath as I skidded up to the warehouse door. Rather than screw around with it, I just pointed my staff and snapped, "_Forzare_!" Invisible force shot from the staff and the door swung open with such alacrity that some small part of my mind suspected it hadn't even been locked, but I didn't have time to think about that; I only had eyes for the huge room within.

She'd set up her space well. Colored banners hung on stands, defining the corners of a large square in the middle of the concrete floor. The diagram between them was horrifically complex, and I thought that it was painted rather than drawn in chalk—a nice touch, making it less likely something would break one of the lines by chance. She was standing on the far side of the space, in the point of the star that was the central figure of the diagram. Her hands were raised over her head, making the heavy sleeves of her robe fall around her elbows.

The body of her brother lay in the middle of the star, wrapped in strips of black and white fabric that formed a complex pattern. At its feet stood the object I'd originally been hired to retrieve, a nondescript statuette of a bird. And in the air at its head, a wavering portal was beginning to form.

The bang of the door against the wall had startled her, but she was collecting herself even as she lowered her hands from her final ritual gestures. "You're too late," she said, sounding infinitely tired. I felt a pang of sympathy; big rituals can take it out of you. The sympathy didn't stop me making sure my staff was pointed right at her, though.

"I can see that," I said softly, trying not to spook her further. "Look, Stephanie, I know what it's like to lose someone." I met her eyes for a long moment so she could see my sincerity, almost too long; I could feel the first beginnings of a soulgaze as I looked away again. "I understand. But you know a little bit about the White Council—" She nodded. "—and you know they don't look kindly on necromancers." I edged a bit closer to her, staff still at the ready.

"It's not necromancy!" she exclaimed. "I'm just getting my brother back. That's all." She looked down at the body with an expression of terrible tenderness.

"That's interfering with a human soul," I said regretfully. "I'm a Warden. If we stop this right now, it's within my authority to ignore the fact that it ever happened." Actually it wasn't, but I was willing to pretend. The portal was firming up, becoming almost solid. There didn't seem to be anything dangerous on the other side, but I spared it a small part of my attention anyway, just in case.

"No, you don't understand," Stephanie said. "No souls, no necromancy. It's only a gateway." She took a sudden step forward, and I tensed, but all she did was kneel at the body's side. "This goes through the gate, and _he_ comes back."

Suddenly everything was happening very fast. She grabbed the wrapped corpse with a strength I wouldn't have credited her with and heaved it towards the portal. I broke into a run, casting out my hand as I did to trigger the force stored in the silver rings I wore. The blast missed the corpse by inches but slapped Stephanie's outstretched hands, spinning her off balance; she fell heavily. The corpse sailed through the portal. I skidded to a halt and steeled myself, preparing to defend against whatever came back through.

Nothing happened. Several seconds later, nothing was still happening.

From her place on the floor, Stephanie let out a moan. "It didn't work," she said. "It should have been instant. He should be back!" She dropped her face into her hands and started to cry. I hate it when women cry.

"Is it going to be bad if I step into this diagram?" I asked. Should've occurred to me before, I admit, but I'd been distracted. I had to repeat the question before she shook her head, not looking up. I walked over and squatted down next to her. "Come on," I said. "We'll clean this up, close the portal before something nasty finds it. You can go home, I'll give my client the statue back, and that'll be the end of it."

"It should have worked," she wailed. I winced at the raw sorrow in her voice. "There has to be an exchange, I put his body through, why didn't it _work_?"

"Be glad it didn't," I said. "I doubt you'd have liked what you got, in exchange for a body two months dead." I put my hand on her elbow and urged her to her feet.

She said nothing for a moment, and I was just about to speak when she said, "In exchange for a dead body." The tone of her voice set all my alarms ringing—it was the tone someone uses when they've just realized what went wrong. "He couldn't come back in exchange for a dead body." She turned to look at me. I opened my mouth to say something (I have no idea what), and that was when she shoved me.

I stumbled backwards. The edges of the portal passed my peripheral vision. I hit the ground with a wham.


	2. Chapter 2

All the breath went out of me, and for several seconds I couldn't do anything more useful than struggling for air. Finally I managed to roll over and scrabble after my staff, which had gone clattering away when I hit the ground. I got a hand around it and turned to aim it at the portal, at Stephanie, but there was nothing there.

As a matter of fact, there was nothing there in a much broader sense. The light that made it through the high, dirty windows wasn't much, but it was enough for me to see that Stephanie's diagram was gone, along with her banners, her stolen statuette, and her.

"Oh, hell's bells," I muttered. I took a moment to get my breathing under control before I concentrated to open my Sight. I was a little wary of it, because you can never forget what the Sight shows you, but the need for information was more pressing than the mere risk of yet another horrible memory to add to my collection.

I shouldn't have worried. The Sight showed me nothing in particular. There wasn't so much as a fading remnant of the place where the portal had hung. There was no magical residue of Stephanie's ritual, either. That sort of worried me; perhaps I'd been knocked out and hadn't noticed? But that seemed unlikely; the power she'd been slinging would have taken at least till dawn to fade, possibly longer because it would be shielded from the sunlight by the warehouse, and I had none of the symptoms of having been unconscious for hours.

For one thing, I didn't need to pee.

I clambered to my feet. My pentacle, which I'd used to track Stephanie to the warehouse, was still in my pocket and wound with her hair. I pulled it out and whispered a word to it, trying to revive the tracking spell. The energy flowed into it, but the pentacle stayed stubbornly hanging straight down. I sighed.

"Of course not," I said to no one. "That would be way too easy."

I spent half an hour or so trying to get something, anything, to register on my magical senses, but I had no luck. I hadn't even brought my portable kit with me, not expecting to have to do any lengthy magical investigation, and the contents of my duster pockets had been geared rather more towards combat than snooping. Finally I decided that I wasn't going to get anywhere on my own; it was time to go home and get some backup.

I dragged the warehouse door closed, though I'd broken the latch making my dramatic entrance. Wouldn't do to have someone wandering in to investigate, and leaving it open would just invite curiosity. I turned away from the door towards where I'd left my car. Which wasn't there.

Now, understand that I don't think the Blue Beetle is a shining example of automotive excellence. For one thing, it has maybe two panels left in the the original blue; everything else has been replaced in whatever color my mechanic could get hold of on the cheap. And it breaks down a lot, though that's not its fault. It might be perfectly reliable if it didn't spend so much time around me, because magic and technology really don't mix. But I _like _my car. It gets me where I need to go, and it doesn't complain about it.

I stared at the spot where it should have been, and said a couple of short words.

* * *

I spent the long trip home wondering when the hell they'd managed to tow the Beetle without me hearing it. I had plenty of time to stew, between waiting for a bus and riding it and waiting for a transfer and riding it, too. For that matter I hadn't seen a No Parking sign, but I considered it a great deal more likely that the car had been towed than that it had been stolen; vintage cars might be popular targets, but vintage cars that look like they've been through a war aren't. I'd have to call around in the morning to find out where it had been taken.

It was well past midnight by the time I got home. I stumped up my block, leaning on my staff for more than just effect (both bus drivers had given me funny looks about it, but I was used to that). I was tired; I hadn't slept well the night before, and I'd spent a fair bit of energy on tracking down Stephanie. The not sleeping hadn't had anything to do with her. I just sometimes have bad dreams.

Finally I made it down the steps to my door, dragging my keys out of my pocket as I went. I unlocked the door, and reached out with the little effort of will it would take to disable my apartment's wards. There was nothing there, and suddenly I was wide awake.

Anyone with a little bit of magic can set up wards on their home. For that matter, just the fact of it being a home makes a degree of protection; a lot of us magical types can't cross a home's threshold uninvited without losing a fair fraction of our ability to mess around with the inhabitants. My apartment's wards were elaborate and heavily reinforced, because I've picked up this ability to make enemies. I can't imagine how it happens.

But the wards weren't there, and that meant something was really, really wrong. I reached into my duster and drew my blasting rod, which I hadn't felt the need to use against Stephanie. I turned the doorknob with my free hand, slowly and quietly. Opening the door itself that way was something of a trick-I installed it myself, and I'm not the world's greatest carpenter-but I kept my body out of the opening as I did it. Nothing leaped out or screamed or exploded, but I did hear something.

Inside my apartment, someone was crying. Softly, steadily, and with a complete hopelessness that reminded me of Stephanie.

I pulled the door open a little further, and stuck my head cautiously around the edge. Candles were burning all over, but they weren't in their accustomed places. Most of the living room was filled with cardboard boxes, as if I'd been packing to move. And on the other side of the couch, framed against a low fire, I could see the weeping form of Karrin Murphy.

Murphy is tiny. She's five feet tall, for one thing, and though she weighs more than you'd think to look at her she's still built like a pixie. Blonde hair and blue eyes don't help the image. It just goes to show you shouldn't judge by appearances, because when it comes to going into a tight spot, there is absolutely no one else I'd rather have with me; Murphy is one of the toughest people I've ever met. But there she was, kneeling in front of the fireplace with her face buried in something as she cried as if her heart was breaking.

"Murphy?" I said. "Stars and stones, Karrin, what's _wrong_?"

She froze. For a long moment neither of us moved, and then Murphy dropped whatever it was she'd been holding. Her head turned with exquisite slowness. A look of huge and joyous relief crossed her face, followed by confusion, and then her expression turned to stone in a way that I knew meant she was furious to the point of rage. "Murph?" I ventured. I'd seen her that angry before-but never with _me_.

I was so focused on her face that I didn't realize what she was doing until she had her gun out and aimed. "Who the hell are you?" Murphy demanded.


	3. Chapter 3

I stared at her, literally gaping. I guess I took too long to answer, because she almost snarled, "I said, _who are you_, and while you're at it you can drop the toys." As she spoke she got smoothly to her feet, her aim never wavering.

"Murphy, Jesus-" I started, but she snapped, "I said drop 'em!" It occurred to me that she looked awfully serious, and Murphy already had her weapon aimed; it wasn't like I was going to get the drop on her, so I just let my hands relax. My staff and blasting rod hit the floor and I moved my hands out and away from my body, trying to look non-threatening.

"Now get rid of the face," she said tightly. Apparently my expression conveyed my incomprehension, because she said, "The face! The, the glamour, the illusion, whatever you're using to look like Dresden, get rid of it."

Huh?

"Um, I can't really do that, Murph-"

"Don't call me that!" she broke in, the tiny bit of tension that had eased when I dropped my weapons springing back into full life. "Only Harr-Dresden gets to call me that." I was beginning to be very worried; Murphy sounded like she was dancing on the ragged edge of her control, and she had a gun pointed right at me. More to the point, she had a gun pointed at my _face_, where there wasn't any of the armor the spells woven into my duster provided for my torso.

"OK, I'm sorry," I said, trying to sound soothing. "I can't do anything about my face, this is what it looks like, uh, Sergeant." Have I mentioned Murphy is a cop? She used to be a lieutenant, but they demoted her because she went missing for a day and a half once-helping me.

"So you're, what, a clone? A doppelganger?"

"No, I'm just me," I said. I knew I sounded totally bewildered. "I'm just me. Murphy, what is going on?"

"You really think you're him," she said. I felt a crazy urge to laugh and shoved it down.

"I'm pretty sure. Look, ask me something. Several somethings. Something only I would know."

"You wanna play it that way?" Murphy asked. "Fine. Where were we, the day we fell in love?"

* * *

I've known Karrin since not long after I moved to Chicago. The first time I ran into her, we spent an exciting few minutes keeping a troll from eating a little girl who'd been crossing his bridge. That wasn't long before she became a detective and joined Special Investigations, that being the part of the Chicago police department that gets stuck with all the cases from my side of the tracks. When someone gets killed by a magical beastie, or by straight-up magic, SI gets to come up with a way to explain it that can go into an official report. They've got more fiction in their reports than most bookstores have on their shelves. And when I'd hung out my shingle saying "wizard", Murphy had started consulting me on some of her cases. Not that she'd believed in my magic back then; I think she figured that it takes a whacko to catch a whacko.

Over time, our relationship had changed.

For one thing, it's not any great secrecy on the part of the magical community that keeps us underground. There's no over-arching Masquerade, no matter what the goth crowd thinks. The simple fact of the matter is that most people aren't _willing_ to believe in magic. No matter how blatant something is, it doesn't take long for them to come up with an explanation that allows them to ignore the fact that the world's more complex than they thought. Murphy was one of the rare exceptions, one of the few people who could stand to believe her eyes.

But that wasn't all. Over time, Murphy had gone to the wall for me more than once. Like I said, she got demoted because she disappeared in the middle of a case to help me rescue a girl in need. She'd put her life in real danger on that occasion and on several others, for no other reason than that it was the right thing to do. I loved her for that. And God knows she's cute as hell, and capable of some really serious violence-yes, I know I have some weird kinks.

We were not, however, a couple. I can be a kind of intense guy, and I'm not good at casual relationships; Murphy, meanwhile, had been married and divorced twice and wasn't looking to get into marriage and kids, especially not while she remained a cop. We'd had the conversation, and decided it was better if we just stayed friends. We were both OK with that.

No, really.

But there'd been one time. We'd been looking into some strange suicides, and found a vampire who was working on a method for making people fall in love. (Lest that seem oddly philanthropic, I should point out that there are several kinds of vampires, that don't necessarily get along, and that one kind can be harmed, even killed, by the touch of a person who truly loves or is loved. The vampire had been trying to cut down on competition by decreasing the rival group's prey supply.)

While Murphy and I were investigating this, we'd gotten hit by the spell ourselves. For a few hours, we were in love. Really, gushingly, embarrassingly in love. We still managed to get the job done, even figured out what was causing the love and destroyed it.

I'd hated destroying it. I still remembered what it had felt like when the love had drained away. I'd known I was losing something precious, but I couldn't stop it winking out.

* * *

"We were at the State Fair," I said. "The seat belt on the Tunnel of Terror ride carried the spell." Murphy let out a pained breath I hadn't even realized she was holding. It took her a second to come up with the control to speak again, which was one of the creepiest things I'd ever seen. Murphy doesn't, as a rule, lose control.

"The bullets I used against the loup-garou," she said.

"Your aunt's silver earrings," I replied. "How about this: Bolshevik Muppet." I waved my left hand a little in illustration. The forging of that particular phrase had lost me the use of that hand for most of a year, and it still wasn't a pretty sight when I took my glove off. That had been another time Murphy had almost gotten herself killed to help me out.

Murphy whispered, "It's you. It's really you." She lowered her gun and holstered it. Her hands were shaking, I noticed with concern. She took a tentative step towards me, then another.

I was still trying to work out what to do next when she suddenly rushed at me. Rather than waste time going around the couch, she vaulted it with a leap worthy of the Olympics. I had just enough time to brace myself before she hit me. She flung her arms around me and buried her face in my shirt front. She'd started crying again, but it wasn't the same kind of tears.

Tentatively, I hugged her back. "It's OK," I said. "I'm OK." I patted her awkwardly. "OK, give me a second," I said, when she seemed to have caught her breath a bit. I loosened her hold on me enough that I could get down on my knees, which put our faces about level-I'm almost seven feet tall, and when I'm standing up Murphy's head just about hits my solar plexus. She studied my face with uncomfortable intensity for a long moment. I caught on that she meant to kiss me just before she did.

A better man than I am would have pulled away, or at least protested. Me, I remembered all too well what it had been like for those few hours, and there were obviously extenuating circumstances somewhere that I didn't know about. So I let Murphy kiss me.

Eventually, we had to come up for air. She pulled back a little, and as she did the light of the candles caught something I hadn't noticed before. Murphy had a scar running down the right side of her face from hairline to chin, just missing the corner of her eye. It hadn't faded all the way to silver yet, but it was obviously an _old_ scar, a few years old at least. The problem was, she hadn't had that scar when I had last seen her, less than two days previously. My eyes flicked to whatever it was she'd been holding, and I realized with a shock what it was: my leather duster.

The one I was currently wearing.

The pieces clicked together in my head.

"Karrin," I said, "I think I know what's happening." Murphy made a questioning sound.

"How long have I been dead?" I asked.


	4. Chapter 4

She stiffened against me. "You said—"

"I am Harry Dresden," I said. "I swear it on my magic." Murphy did not look reassured, as well she shouldn't have. "I'm just not…I'm not _your_ Harry Dresden." I waved one hand helplessly. "I'm not from _here_."

"No, you're from, what, Missouri?"

"I don't mean here Chicago, Murph. I mean here this dimension."

There was a pause. Slowly, Murphy said, "I swear to you, Harry, if this is some sort of joke I'm going to _fucking_ kill you." She pulled away from me, her body language going stiff and defensive.

I winced. "No joke. You ever see that _Star Trek_ episode…" I studied her face. "OK, maybe not the best example, but I'm not coming up with anything better. Look, maybe I should just tell you how my day so far has gone." After a second, she nodded.

"About a month and a half ago, a college student named Edward Law was killed in a car accident," I said. "His sister Stephanie decided that she needed to get him back."  
"With magic," Murphy said.

"Yep. To do this, she stole an artifact that belongs to a couple who's part of the Paranet. Which is how they recognized that the theft was magical—the wife has a little trickle of power, enough to sweep for magical residue. So they called me."

Murphy rolled her eyes, but made no further comment. It annoyed her sometimes that people held out on the police when it came to magic stuff, but she understood the problem. Or at least, the Murphy I knew understood.

"It took me a few days to track her down, and I was all ready to go in after the statue when she decamped for a nice traditional abandoned warehouse to do her ritual in."

"So is this Stephanie someone's apprentice?" Murphy asked.

"She seems to be self-taught," I said. "Pretty impressive, too, all things considered. As far as I can tell she hasn't even broken any of the Laws." Murphy made a disgusted face, which confused me a little. I filed it away for later discussion. "Anyway, when I got there she was all done casting. She took the body of her brother—might want to check with the cemetery on that one, by the way—and threw it through the portal she made. That didn't do anything. What did do something was shoving _me_ through it. I just don't know what, because I ended up here."

"Here, this dimension," Murphy said. Her voice was perfectly calm, but I could see the strain all over her face. She was about to cry again, and desperately didn't want me to know it. "You're just like my Harry, only you're not. He's dead after all."

And finally the penny dropped—I think it was the tiny stress on the word 'my'.

"Oh, Karrin," I said softly. "I'm so sorry."

"Sorry about what? That my friend is dead?" She stepped back another pace and turned her face away from me.

"He wasn't just your friend. I'm pretty dense, but I can see things when they're right in front of me," I said. "That's why you asked about the day we fell in love."

She laughed, but the sound was harsh and held no humor at all. "We…we were so desperate for it not to end," she said. "We had to force ourselves to go through with burning the belt, and all the while it was going up I kept waiting to feel different. But we didn't." She took a long breath. "We decided we'd stay away from each other till it wore off. We lasted almost a week. God, why am I telling you this? You know."

"Burning the belt…ended it for me," I said. "Me and, and Murphy, at least. There weren't any more suicides that fit the profile, so we figured any other couples were OK too."

For a while, neither of us said anything.

"So you're not with…me. Her. The other Karrin Murphy," she said at last.

"No."

Murphy nodded. After a second she asked, "What are you going to do now?"

I sighed and started to climb back to my feet. "I was planning to get some sleep, for one thing, but, well, is my—his—is the bed packed yet?" I gestured at the boxes.

"It's not," Murphy said, and then hesitantly, "I've been sleeping here the last few nights. While I pack up his things." She sounded as if she expected me to protest.

"How about I take the couch then," I said. I very carefully didn't notice the fleeting expression of disappointment that went over Murphy's face.


End file.
